AMFACO SUCCESSFULLY COMPLETES FISH4FISH PROJECT

The Anfaco canning company has successfully completed the European Fish4Fish project. Thanks to this pioneering initiative, the development of active and sustainable packaging for fishery products from crustacean biowaste has been achieved, providing a new value to this waste, with zero waste.

Specifically, the Fish4Fish project, focused on boosting the blue bioeconomy, was born with the objective of culminating a profitable business for producers, the processing industry and food companies.  ANFACO’s objective was to produce chitosan from waste material from the seafood processing industry, in this case mainly from shrimp/shrimp waste, and others from biorefineries such as lignin, in order to manufacture high value-added food packaging. ANFACO also validated the use of the new packaging materials for use with marine products.

Specifically, chitin is the most abundant polymer on the planet after cellulose, and in the case of crustacean waste such as that used in FISH4FISH it accounts for 15-20% of the weight of the material on a dry basis. The process involves the isolation of chitin through depigmentation, deproteinization and demineralization processes, to subsequently proceed to the deacetylation stage that provides chitosan, a polymer that has several applications of high commercial interest, due to characteristics such as its non-toxicity, as well as its biodegradability and biocompatibility.

Thus, chitosan is used in the medical field, as a vehicle for the controlled release of drugs, it is also used as an antimicrobial agent, in water treatment it has been applied for metal removal, and in food it has been applied as a thickener, as a preservative and as a material for packaging. This last point is where the interest of the material within the FISH4FISH project is focused.

The aim is to produce a sustainable and functional material to be used as packaging for seafood products, thus improving the shelf life of the product and avoiding microbial spoilage of the food. 

The project also proposed an integral use of the by-products used, therefore the deproteinization stage is carried out with enzymes to promote not only the obtaining of chitosan/chitooligosaccharides but also protein hydrolysates as a co-product with high importance in multiple markets nowadays. The possibility of recovering astaxanthin at some stage of the process will also be evaluated.